1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to semiconductor technology about the chemical mechanical polishing equipment and the conditioner. More particularly, the present invention relates to the chemical mechanical polishing equipment and the conditioner, which can improve the removing-rate of residual particles on the polishing pad.
2. Description of Related Art
For the planarization technology, the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology has been widely used to have global planarization. In general, during the CMP process, the slurry with suspending abrasive particles and the polishing pad with proper elasticity and hardness are used, so as to achieve the planarization by a relative motion on the wafer surface.
FIG. 1 is a side view, schematically illustrating the conventional CMP equipment. FIG. 2 is a top view, schematically illustrating the conditioner and the polishing pad. In FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the conventional CMP equipment 100 includes a polishing pad 110, a holder 120, a slurry supplier 130, a conditioning 140, and a gas supplier 150.
The polishing pad 110 has a polishing surface 112. The holder 120 is implemented above the polishing pad 110 to hold a wafer 10. This holder 120 carries the wafer 10 to have a relative motion between the surface of the wafer 10 and the polishing surface 112 of the polishing pad 110, so as to polish the surface of the wafer 10.
The slurry supplier 130 is implemented above the polishing pad 110. The slurry supplier 130 can supply the slurry 132, which has suspending abrasive particles, to the polishing pad 110 for performing polishing process. The surface of the wafer 10 contacts with the abrasive particles of the slurry 132, and the polishing effect is produced to move some surface material of the wafer 10. The wafer surface then gradually becomes planar.
The conditioning 140 is implemented around the polishing pad 110. This conditioning 140 is composed of a supporting rod 142 and a bar-shape conditioning member 144 disposed on the supporting rod 142, and the surface of the bar-shape conditioning member 144 has several diamond particles 146. The conditioning 140 is suitable for repeated moving along a conditioning path A, such as an arc path, on the polishing surface 112, and the bar-shape conditioning member 144 can clean the residual particles left on the polishing surface 112 during the polishing process (see FIG. 2). In this manner, the produced residual particles on the polishing surface 112, after a certain number of times in polishing wafers, are cleaned by the conditioning 140, so as to maintain the uniform polishing of the polishing pad 110.
The gas supplier 150 is implemented under the polishing pad 110. The gas supplier 150 can supply a gas to the bottom of the polishing pad 110, and more particularly to the central region of the bottom of the polishing pad 110. In this manner, the central region of the polishing pad 110 is more protruding than the peripheral region. As a result, the polishing pad 110 can keep the pressure exerted by the holder 120 and the conditioning 140.
However, the bar-shape conditioning member 144 of the conditioning 140 has the larger hardness relatively than the supporting rod 142, and the bar-shape conditioning member 144 is disposed on the whole surface of the supporting rod 142. This causes the loss of flexibility for the supporting rod. Therefore, when the gas supplier 150 supplies the gas to the bottom of the polishing pad 110, causing the central region of the polishing pad 110 to be higher than the peripheral region, the supporting rod 142 is confined by the bar-shape conditioning member 144 and can not be changed in shape. In this situation, the bar-shape conditioning member 144 cannot fully contact onto the whole part of the polishing surface 112. As a result, when the conditioner 140 repeatedly moves along the conditioning path A on the polishing surface 112, residual particles at some region cannot be cleaned by the conditioning 140 because the polishing surface 112 does not contact with the bar-shape conditioning member 144 at the region. The polishing uniformity for the polishing pad 110 is reduced.